The poet John Milton -- husband of three wives, father of three daughters and the offstage presence who looms over Eva Figes's sixth novel, "The Tree of Knowledge" -- had considerable difficulty with the women in his life. His first wife, the 17-year-old Mary Powell, fled home to her family immediately after the marriage and stayed away for several years. Eventually, Milton managed to effect some reconciliation and the two settled down, however warily, producing four children: his daughters, Anne, Mary and Deborah, as well as John, his only son, who died in infancy. In 1652, three days after Deborah's birth, Mary Powell Milton also died.

With three daughters under the age of 10, Milton turned to Mary's mother for help. Mrs. Powell, who had long disliked her son-in-law, did little to endear him to his children. When Milton remarried a few years later, the daughters he presented to his new wife were angry and spiteful. His bride, however, had no time to win them over: within two years, she too died in childbirth.

By the time Milton married again, his daughters were adolescents in full rebellion against the father they accused of tyranny. Although there is little documentation to help us understand the relationship between Milton and his children, evidence suggests that he ignored their emotional and intellectual needs. For all his public protestations about liberty and equality of opportunity, Milton proved more interested in the education of his male relatives than of his own daughters. According to their father's biographers, they felt exploited -- for example, after he'd gone blind he forced them to read to him in languages they did not understand -- and demeaned. He did not even bother to tell them of his forthcoming marriage to his third wife. When they heard the news from a servant, Mary replied, according to A. N. Wilson's 1983 biography, "that was no news to hear of his wedding but if she could hear of his death that was something."

The household was volatile at best, unbearable when the girls were in full fury against their father and his new wife. Milton's daughters complained that their stepmother was a termagant. One early biographer noted that Milton suffered "the Affront and Scorn of a Wife he Lov'd."

Anne and Mary never forgave their father for whatever sins they believed he committed against them. But Deborah, the youngest, and the daughter who most resembled Milton, seems to have made peace with his memory. After his death, she even came to serve as a source for early scholars seeking information about the famous man of letters.

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The German-born British novelist Eva Figes resurrects Deborah as the narrator of "The Tree of Knowledge," less a novel than an extended monologue, which explores not only Milton's relationships with women but the historical context of women's lives in 17th-century England. Ms. Figes feels no ambiguity about Milton's treatment of his daughters. While some biographers speculate that he ignored their education because they were not very bright -- Anne, in fact, is thought to have been brain-damaged or retarded -- Ms. Figes assumes that Milton was a misogynist. "The Tree of Knowledge," then, presents a feminist reading of both Milton and his times.

Readers familiar with Ms. Figes's previous works will not be surprised by this point of view. In 1970, her study of "Patriarchal Attitudes" offered an aggressive argument about the role of religion, psychology, economics and social customs in subjugating women. Milton, among many other male writers, did not fare well in this book; in particular, Ms. Figes objected to his portrayal of women as irrational beings, liars, cheats and seducers.

Although Ms. Figes allows Deborah moments of generosity toward her father, Milton is depicted as cruel, insensitive and intolerant. Deborah regrets the loss of what she might have been: "He might have made much of us, with more kindness," she says. "I doubt not I should have grown under his tutelage, more than his scorn." But it was the mores of her society, not just her father's prejudice, that oppressed her. In "The Tree of Knowledge," Ms. Figes vividly and passionately creates a world in which women's aspirations had no means of fulfillment, a world peopled by powerless, voiceless women and powerful, articulate -- but blind -- men.

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A version of this review appears in print on June 16, 1991, on Page 7007020 of the National edition with the headline: Unjust Were the Ways of Milton. Today's Paper|Subscribe